Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 10:02 pm Post subject: Best schools to work for in Japan.

I'm sure this topic gets put up quite a lot but I want to teach in Japan (hopefully Tokyo) and I would like to know the best schools. I'm a CELTA graduate and this will be my second year teaching. I have experience of working with children, teenagers and adults. I've taught Business English, conversation and TOEFL/IELTS. My first job was in Indonesia with EF and I had a lot of bad experiences with them and I am hesitant to work in a school similar to them. Are there any schools in Japan that pay well and basically don't take their teachers for a ride and treat them as a means to gain money? Any help would be aprreciated.

Last edited by shogunofthedark on Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

Are there any schools in Japan that pay well and basically don't take their teachers for a ride and treat them as a means to gain money? Any help would be aprreciated.

Every school is in business to make money. Some are quite unscrupulous, but by and large I think you will find that most are honest and upright. That's about all you can really hope for or expect.

What exactly are you saying that you want to avoid?

3 Examples
Dispatch agencies are known (generally speaking) for avoiding co-payments into shakai hoken, for cutting salaries during school breaks, and some other insidious things. Don't like it? Don't work for them.

Some eikaiwas also dodge the co-payment bullet, but it's legal to do. Precisely how they do it is a matter of interpretation, so once again, if you don't like it, don't work for that eikaiwa.

Just saw another age-old report of someone who got scammed by a company that hurried him over here on a tourist status, conned him into working without a visa and lied to him about the visa process. After a while, they fired him over a petty concern, and the poor guy has overstayed his legal time and has 50,000 yen to his name.

Money is a problem for me. In Jakarta my pay was disgusting, with teachers being worked to excess with little chance of overtime. That being said, the jobs I've looked at have pretty good pay. Then again, with my past salary, I have nothing to compare the pay to.

Hours were also a problem. We would constantly do out-of-school activities such as promotion for the school, special work shops, placement tests etc and not get a penny for them. We would also work six days a week, 7-9 most days, all within the hours stated in the contracts so as not to give us overtime. If overtime did arise, it was a struggle to actually get them to pay it.

Pay and what you can save from it will obviously depend on a variety of factors, such as urban vs. rural life, personal lifestyle, rent, and employer, just to name some of the biggies.

Salaries for entry level jobs here have fallen from an average of 250,000 yen/month to something like 200,000-250,000. Figure you will spend 125,000 or so for basic necessities on average. What you do with the rest is up to you.

Hours in eikaiwas generally run from noonish to 9pm. Hours for ALTs in public schools is more like 8:30am to 4 or 5pm. Eikaiwas operate 7 days a week, so you might work any 5-6 of those days and have weekends as 2 consecutive days or 2 days spaced apart. ALT work is in public schools, so you have Sat/Sun off.

Eikaiwas often don't count any hours outside of the classroom as paid work, but you might be expected to do prep, paperwork, or interview (level test) prospective students then. ALTs generally avoid most non-administrative work, some are encouraged to join school clubs, some are told to join students at lunchtime, and many complain that they cannot leave the school grounds when they are not in class.

How does that work, Joel? I didn't think dispatch people could get FT jobs in private HS's. Your boss/employer is the dispatch, not the school or BOE, so I'm curious what kind of contract and responsibilities you have.

The following link is for ALTs, but what's important is the type of contract you have: haken or gyomu-itaku. Please note that for ALTs, gyomu-itaku is not fully described here. It says "this is the
most common employment
method for ALTs, even though
the Labour Bureau and
Ministry of Education has
ordered boards to stop this
type of employment."
http://interacunion.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dispatch-chart.pdf

I'm not sure about the legality... But the company just put me in the school, and left me alone. They pay my salary, but all work is done by me, as instructed by the school (and instruction consisted of being given some textbooks in the first week, and told to teach from them). I teach alone, aside from first grade JH. I design the curriculum, plan all lessons and tests.

Perhaps there are different rules for private schools? The only contact with the BoE came when I had to provide a few details for the BoE records, sent by the school after I'd already been accepted for the position.

EDIT: So from that chart, it sounds like I have a standard Haken contract.